He’s grand, Barney says. He’s saying that he’s grand. How can the wee bastard be grand? He’s just died. Ask him how it goes in heaven, Wee Robin says. What’s it like in heaven, Tommy? Miracle Baby asks him.

>:- i-t-g-o-s-w-i-t-h-u-t-b-e-i-n-g -:<

What?!

then

>:- a-m-l-o-v-e-i-n-t-h-e-a-n-g-l-e-s -:<

The angels, he’s fucking getting off with the angels, Barney bursts. This is fucking Tommy for sure.

But that’s not what he says, I says to them. He says: I am love in the angles. He says: in heaven it goes without being. Maybe it’s us that don’t understand. Then Beavis asks him a question. Tommy, he says to him, what is it like to die?

The heart-shaped speller stops moving. It just sits there and vibrates on the spot. I think to myself, he shouldn’t have asked him that. We’re going to lose him. But then he’s off. The speller starts moving in these wee delicate loops, in these wee circles, spinning from one letter to the next. The room starts to get fuzzy. Then I hear that fucking music. That crackling hissing music like it’s come in out the past. That music that I heard before. And I see what he’s doing. I’m watching our hands, all moving together, all coordinated, and it’s like a dance. And I see what he’s saying. I watch it come alive in front of us. Then I hear it, and there’s no mistaking

>:- m-a-k-e-l-o-v-e-t-o-l-i-f-e-l-e-t-l-i-f-e-m-a-k-e-l-o-v-e-t-o-y-o-u -:<

He’s singing a Como number up in heaven. What a chanter. Then I think to myself, it’s so like our Tommy. Even when he was in the hospital and you were trying to get a straight answer out him, even then he’d be trying to seduce you. Now here he was, in heaven, with all the answers at his fingertips, and it was the exact same fucking story.

*

I wait for Kathy outside the Europa every night for a week and then I walk into the reception and ask for her. I don’t recognise any of the security guards but the wee bird Sharon that had arranged the flowers for me and had given me the blank note was still on reception. Hello, stranger, she says to me. Is Kathy around? I says to her. Kathy doesn’t work here anymore, she says to me. Didn’t she tell you? We had a wee bit of a falling-out, I says to her. The end of the affair, she says. She’s left a lot of clients jangling, she says to me. A true heart-stealer, eh?

What do you mean, clients? I says to her. Sure, you don’t have to pretend with me, she says. I knew what was going on. There was no judgement. I helped her out. We’re all adults here, after all. Naw, I says to her. You don’t understand, love. We were having a love affair, I says to her, there was no money changing hands. Lucky you, she says to me, and she winks.